I had a ND today

[Robb]

I guess it's a N.D.
I had put the rifles away and transitioned to a 1911. Pulled the hand gun out of the case, loaded up a mag, inserted it, did a slingshot rack to charge the gun. Had my booger hook off the trigger and after the slingshot to charge it, she went off. Chambered the round and fired it in one smooth motion. That'll wake you up.

That's never happened before. Thankfully other than my son, no one else was around to witness that. Put a hole in the dirt a few feet in front of my foot.
Fired 200 rounds without further incident but I sure was aware of where the muzzle was pointing when doing a slingshot or dropping the slide stop.
Got the gun home and did a did a detail strip of the slide, firing pin etc. Nothing jumped out at me and it only happened once but it was the very first round. That kind of took the fun out of the range session.

I was shooting some cheap aluminum cased ammo. Doubt that was the cause. What do you guys think, sticky firing pin maybe?

[fitz19d]

My facetious answer would be cause it's a 1911, for serious I dunno.

[SideShow Bob]

Did you actually eyeball the ammo as you loaded the magazine to spot bad cases, set backed bullets, and most important, protruding primers ?
Or, when was the last time you cleaned the pistol ? And if cleaned, did you push the firing pin in too far when reinstalling the firing pin stop and lodge it in the hole in the breach face ?

You didn't recently have any trigger work done to lighten the pull did you?

I bet the next time you pull the slide back to chamber a round you will have the muzzle pointed down range in a safe direction.

Since you are in Thornton, get ahold of Bert with BP Tactical to give your pistol the once over to see if there is any mechanical problems.

[Wulf202]

Check your firing pin channel and spring

[SouthPaw]

Hammer follow. Happened to me before as well.

[Irving]

Glad everyone was safe. Hope it doesn't happen again.

[Robb]

I pulled the firing pin, cleaned it up, ran a patch through the channel and pushed it back out, firing pin has a new spring. Did the same with the extractor channel.
Never considered hammer follow. Thanks for mentioning that. What causes that? Half cock notch breaking? Too light of trigger? I guess I have homework to do.

[SouthPaw]

I couldn't tell you exactly what causes hammer follow but I'm sure Bert will chime in and explain it. You can check it racking the slide back and dropping it full force to see if the hammer follows the slide home (of course with a clear and empty gun). After I did that and saw that was my problem, I called Springfield and they immediately sent a return label to me to send it in. They fixed it but wouldn't tell me what was wrong.

[ray1970]

I'll second a vote for hammer follow.

You might be able to verify it with an empty pistol. Make sure it's unloaded and lock the slide back with no magazine. Push the slide stop down and let the slide slam forward. You might have to do it a few times. If you do it and the hammer goes down when the slide slams shut then you have issues.

Oh, and this isn't really good on the gun. A few times probably won't hurt but I wouldn't do it too much.

[SouthPaw]

Ray is correct. I'm typing from my phone and was not really wanting to put in the effort in long terms. It is unfortunately hard on the gun to do this test but it will give you your answer. My springer would do it about every 4th-5th time.